Over the past few weeks, a group of protesters have stationed themselves in front of the U.S. Bank in the Memorial Union, protesting its placement on a public university. While the protesters’ concerns are valid, banks, and any private entity for that matter, can have a functional place on a public college campus.

A bank’s primary function is to provide a safe place to keep and save money, and in turn, use that money to provide credit and investments to other people. The primary target of the campus branch is college students, so naturally it will offer student loans and low-limit credit cards to help students pay for tuition and other purchases.

This in itself is not wrong. It’s safe to say that nearly every student at UC Davis keeps their money in a bank of some kind, and not under their mattress or behind the toilet. Therefore, whether a bank branch is on campus or 20 feet away, students will use it. There is a clear market for banks among college students, particularly ones that are conveniently located on campus.

A lot of the contention over U.S. Bank and banks in public universities is that they are capitalizing on a desperate student population in need of loans to pay for rising tuition costs. Therefore, these on-campus banks can charge higher-than-market interest rates and the students will have no choice but to use that bank. This may be the case for a college town with only one bank in the city, but this isn’t the situation for Davis.

A couple blocks off campus lay numerous other banks that can offer student loans and credit, some at lower interest rates than U.S. Bank. Therefore, students, acting as rational individuals, will find the best loan interest rate according to their needs. The U.S. Bank in the MU does not have a monopoly on the market for credit and loans, despite its location.

Another concern, especially this U.S. Bank branch, is that the university is profiting off every new account that is opened at that branch. Therefore, UC Davis would want as many students to use this U.S. Bank, even if the terms of the loan aren’t optimal.

This is an unfortunate conflict of interest. On the one hand, with rising tuition costs, the administration should want students to find the cheapest way to pay for the fees. At the same time, the university wants to maximize the income it can receive from U.S. Bank to, in turn, reduce costs displaced onto students.

The best way for the university to neutralize this issue is to provide students with transparent information about student loans and help students find optimal loans. With Financial Aid Awareness Week currently going on, UC Davis is providing students with information about loans in an effort to help them find the optimal ones.

Nonetheless, banks can function at a public university. Students need the services provided by these financial institutions and, if the terms of the contract are right, universities can earn additional income at almost no expense to help offset rising tuition fees.

All things considered, these issues don’t devalue the sanctity of public education. The university is attempting to find new sources of income that don’t come from the state, which seems to be the future of public education funding.

What do you think about banks on a public university? Send in your opinion to opinion@theaggie.org.

Signed by: Jason Alpert, Trevor Cramer, Amy Stewart, Hannah Strumwasser, Uyen Cao

Editor’s note: The California Aggie Editorial Board was split. For another perspective, see Banks on campus: Not in our interest. 

 What about you? If you have an opinion on U.S. Bank, or any other campus issues, let us know. Send your letter to opinion@theaggie.org by Wednesday at noon to be published in Thursday’s Aggie.

“Will you marry me?” [Beep, beep, pause.] “Let’s just be friends, OK?”

‘Atta girl, Siri. In October, Apple debuted the latest in artificial intelligence, their sharp-witted Siri, as a headlining feature of the iPhone 4S. The voice-recognition software was released in beta, of course, because technology meant to mimic human behavior is bound to fall short of expectations. Siri is supposed to do everything a personal assistant would, like schedule lunch dates, set timers, jot down reminders, send a text or make calls. She’s certainly willing, but she isn’t very capable.

On Amtrak, I overheard this Siri conversation: “Will it rain?” “Do you mean ‘Will Rentay’?” “No. WILL. IT. RAIN.”

I find most people talk to their Siris this way, the same way most American tourists speak to non-English-speaking nationals — at snail pace and near-shouting volume. If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of that kind of speech, you know that the “loud and slow” approach doesn’t actually improve your comprehension of an unfamiliar language. The same goes for Siri.

In my experience, Siri takes too long to respond to my commands and doesn’t get it right when I need her, rendering the feature useless. The product is rough around the edges, which is completely out of character for a company as detail-obsessed as Apple. You’d think Apple would keep this beta app behind the scenes, under wraps, or in development (where it belongs) until it has been perfected. Yet, Siri continues to appear at the forefront in the company’s national TV ad campaign, which airs at least twice during “Modern Family.” On Apple’s website, Siri stands alongside two substantial developments — a dual-core A5 chip and a high-def camera — that make the 4S “the most amazing iPhone yet.”

But I am so disappointed by Siri’s performance because she’s not polished in the way I have come to expect from Apple products. Apple continues to tout Siri as one of its most revolutionary features, even though she doesn’t seem to work. So, Apple, why so serious about Siri?

My first hunch is Apple’s eye on things to come. The future of computing, at least according to “The Jetsons,” Star Wars/Trek and Smart House (you know, the Disney Channel movie), involves more human sensory experience. We will engage with technology less through keyboards and mice, and more through touch, motion and speech. Apple has perfected the touchscreen and produced the best tablet in the industry, the iPad, so touch is already under the company’s belt. So, I suppose, on to something new: speech.

Apple’s foray into the realm of voice recognition is not surprising. Visions of the future suggest that we will be able to tell our ovens, “Pre-heat to 375 degrees” and tell our showers, “Heat up my water just the way I like it.” But this kind of technology, at least for now, only exists in galaxies far, far away. This may be why Apple has been pushing Siri on their most popular product, the iPhone (37 million units sold last quarter). When people use Siri, Apple collects data — people speaking in different languages, in different accents, with different jargon — so that the service will improve over time.

Every time you ask Siri a question, the program turns your speech into text and sends that text to Apple servers. Then Siri’s response is sent back to your phone. Even seemingly useless questions like, “What is the meaning of life?” have serious implications for the research and development of integration with future products. The more people use Siri, the more data goes into the servers, the better she gets.

And Apple certainly hopes to be the best, as it does with all its products. Siri is said to be the main attraction of the long-rumored Apple television set, which is expected to be the first TV that thinks the way you do. Say “ESPN” and you’re already there.

Siri, as she is now, is too slow for what we’ve come to expect from our phones. But maybe we’ll take her more Siri-ously once she’s in our ovens, showers and TVs.

This column nearly went unfinished because Siri forgot to e-mail NICOLE NGUYEN at niknguyen@ucdavis.edu, reminding her that it was due.

Senior year of high school holds such fond memories for me. That was the year I finally became thin and, by extension, relevant.

After some rigorous soul-searching, my friend Sophia and I realized that all of our life problems could be solved by a simple weight loss regime; it was so obvious, we couldn’t understand why we had never thought of it before. After all, it’s almost impossible not to realize in this day and age that being slender is synonymous with being sexy, and sexiness is tandem to success. It’s scientific. Look it up.

People always preached throughout my upbringing that the most magnetic feature a person can have is a terrific personality, which is, obviously, a horrendous lie. My eyebrows attract a net minimum of six compliments per year, but I can’t even recall the last time somebody told me, “You know, you have the most amazing sense of empathy.” This, I’ve come to realize, is because it isn’t education or personal affectations that attract people; it’s the confidence to wear your God-given looks well — the kind of confidence one acquires from being skinny.

It was probably about halfway through adolescence when it dawned on me that, in spite of my glowing charisma, I was still criminally under-appreciated by my high school peers. Two friends and I would spend lunch in solitude behind the science building, eating boxed California rolls and lamenting how misunderstood we were. Since the general consensus seemed to be that we were perfect personality-wise, it stood to reason that my only roadblock to universal adoration was an imperfect physique.

This epiphany was bound to strike at some point; like any other American kid who grew up in front of a TV screen, I was raised to believe that the average girl was born a waif and the average guy came into the world lithe, toned and with the face of Jonathan Taylor Thomas. These were common traits I noticed amongst the crowd of my favorite childhood celebrities and, I deduced, the markers of a likable, successful person.

The only issue I’ve been able to find with such thinspiration, though, is the extremism it seems to elicit from certain people. It seems that not everyone is capable of digesting the gently subliminal messages the media provides us with. I recently came across an expanding internet trend of people leading what they call a “pro-ana” lifestyle.

The women and men of the pro-ana (a shortening of the word “anorexia”) movement claim that “ana” is their friend, often personifying it as a “she” and stating that it’s an active lifestyle decision rather than a disorder. The movement has, like everything else, been condensed into a hashtag which can now be seen all over Tumblr and other websites, usually with an accompanying photo of a horrifically malnourished human being.

More than simply being “so jealousssss” of skeletal body types, though, pro-ana/pro-mia (for bulimia) activists have a tendency to insult anyone without visible pelvic bones or rib cages. It’s not uncommon to see one of their brood disparaging a fellow blogger just for having thighs that touch each other.

In one particularly troubling case, I followed the digital breadcrumbs of an ana-keen blogger all the way back to her YouTube account, where I found a series of videos documenting her efforts to juggle her pregnancy and anorexia.

“And this is me at eight months,” she said to the camera, lifting up her cami to reveal a third trimester bump no larger than a kaiser roll.

By now it’s pretty clear that I’m a proponent of beautification, but not when it flirts with self-harm. If you ask me, it’s absolutely indisputable that, while the quest for skinniness and popularity can often be one of desperation and extraordinary measures, it’s never necessary to develop an eating disorder.

The real question is, where did these disorders come from? Who could argue that forced regurgitation or intentional starvation are healthy dietary means? Why would anyone willingly suffer just to become thin? These will be good questions to keep me occupied while I wait for the next season of American’s Next Top Model.

DYLAN GALLAGHER can be reached at dylaaaaan@gmail.com, cleverblog.tumblr.com/ask, or his office in the Downtown Davis Chipotle.